FERAL FEMMES

IN JUST TWO SEASONS OF SHOWTIME'S HIT HORROR series Yellowjackets, there's been a catastrophic plane crash, a wild wolf attack, several affairs, a lot of murders and two cannibalistic feasts.

- TARA bENNETT

Not bad for a show about a team of all-star, female, New Jersey high school soccer players.

But it's clear by now that the subtext driving the narrative is really about what happens when, post-plane crash, these teen survivors let their IDs go wild, then get saved and have to function once again in proper society. The show services dual storylines, one set circa 1996 with the teens in the remote wilderness of Canada where they're stuck, and the other is 25 years later, back in suburban New Jersey, where the adult survivors are not doing that great... Season two ended with a local wilderness reunion with adult mum Shauna (Melanie Lynskey),

NJ Senate candidate Taissa Turner (Tawny Cypress), eccentric Misty Quigley (Christina Ricci), and new age guru Lottie (Simone Kessell) messing up their lives so badly with secrets, lies and murders that it all comes to a head, leading to the tragic accidental death of their long-haunted friend, Natalie Scatorccio (Juliette Lewis).

Many fans were up in arms at the loss of Lewis from the cast, but Yellowjackets executive producer/co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco tells SFX that while he respects the passion, death has always been part of their storytelling. “If the show is about trauma and the consequences of your actions,” Lisco says, “then there needs to be consequences,” Lisco says, without regret. “We can’t have consequences if you’re not going to let that play out through affect some of our seminal characters.”

“For us, it’s more that we want to understandable to our very dear audience, ‘How do we make sure that the choices affect them emotionally or psychologically, then what are we doing?’ Because that’s the conceit of the show.”